1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for synthesizing voice.
2. Description of the Related Art
A voice synthesis technology of segment connection type has been suggested in which voice is synthesized by selectively combining a plurality of segment data items, each representing a voice segment (or voice element) (for example, see Patent Reference 1). Segment data of each voice segment is prepared by recording voice of a specific speaker and dividing the speech voice into voice segments and analyzing each voice segment.    [Patent Reference 1] Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2003-255998    [Non-Patent Reference 1] Alexander Kain, Michael W. Macon, “Spectral Voice Conversion for Text-to-Speech Synthesis”, Proceedings of the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, vol. 1, p. 285-288, May 1998
In the technology of Patent Reference 1, there is a need to prepare segment data for all types (all species) of voice segments individually for each voice quality of synthesized sound (i.e., for each speaker). However, speaking all species of voice segments required for voice synthesis imposes a great physical and mental burden upon the speaker. In addition, there is a problem in that it is not possible to synthesize voice of an speaker whose voice cannot be previously recorded (for example, voice of an speaker who passed away) when available species of voice segments are insufficient (deficient) for the speaker.